China: Kashgar reports over 100 COVID-19 cases

The Kashgar COVID outbreak is the biggest reported in China since a cluster of cases linked to a market in Beijing in June.

Kashgar: The city of Kashgar in China reported over 100 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the regional health authority said.

Gu Yingsu, the Deputy Head of the Xinjiang Health Committee, told a press conference that all 137 new cases were related to one identified in a 17-year-old villager in Shufu county the previous day, South China Morning Post reported.

Gu said the cases were all related to a factory in a neighbouring village where the girl's parents worked, as per the South China Morning Post.

The Kashgar authorities started a mass testing programme after the girl was found to be infected during a routine screening. The health authority said the 17-year-old worked in a different factory making clothes and returned home once every two weeks. As many as 831 other workers at the factory were tested negative.

Gu further said that 4.75 million people in total would be tested for the virus, and 2.8 million samples had been collected by Sunday afternoon.

The authorities said they have so far received results from 334,800 of the tests and found no new cases apart from those linked to the factory.

ANI

Read:|Chinese company offers coronavirus vaccine to students